Report: EA shut down BioWare in favor of Star Wars: Battlefront sequel

Imran Khan,Contributing Editor

October 30, 2026

schedule2 Min Readvia DICE/EA

A new report indicatesElectronic Arts' recent shutdown of BioWare was precipitated by a financial showdown between two big science-fiction titles: the in-development Mass Effect: Universe and an unannounced new Star Wars: Battlefield title, according to a new report from Bloomberg. Unwilling to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on both projects, EA pivoted to putting its resources into Star Wars, despite publicly shying away from licensed games less than two years ago.

The Bloomberg report specifically cites financial pressure coming from the leveraged buy-out of Electronic Arts, which saddled the company with $18 billion in debt that it is expected to pay off that debt through operating profits. Trying to minimize losses and maximize returns, EA cancelled Mass Effect to focus on the less risky and more predictable wellspring of Star Wars with a new multiplayer-shooter Battlefront title.

This decision comes just 18 months after EA cancelled an open-world Black Panther game and shut down developer Cliffhanger Games, and two years after it announced a strategic shift that took the company away from licensed titles. While a new Star Wars: Battlefront may fly in the face of that pivot, it is worth noting that EA's commitment to abandoning licensed titles was never full-bodied, as the company is still developing an Iron Man game based on the Marvel superhero.

The report also mentions that corporate politics may have played their own role in the closure, with EA shuffling around its executives and sidelining longtime EA Entertainment president Laura Miele, who had supported BioWare and Mass Effect in particular.

The cancellation of Mass Effect: Universe left BioWare in a lurch with no active projects, giving EA ample reason to shut the studio down. In a recent interview with 80.lv, BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk criticized the closure, stating that companies like EA do not understand game development.

?The other harsh reality of almost all these companies, the people that go down the business track never really come from the development track," Zeschuk said. “Because none of these people have ever made a game, like, never really sat and made one, like, from start to finish, even a small thing, they just don’t know how it works."

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About the Author

Imran Khan

Contributing Editor

Imran Khan has been in the games industry in various forms for over two decades. He has been a former senior editor at Game Informer, a professional loudmouth at Kinda Funny, and news director at Fanbyte. He has also been doing PR for Vicarious PR and Head of U.S. PR for Japanese VR studio MyDearest, in addition to Producer work on their latest title Brazen Blaze.

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